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Traditionally, a clause is defined as consisting of a subject and predicate. In Oxford Dictionary, it is defined as:

A unit of grammatical organization next below the sentence in rank and in traditional grammar said to consist of a subject and predicate.

But recent linguistics says you don't need a subject to qualify as a clause. For example, an imperative clause normally can get away with no subject:

Come on in.

Except for the imperatives, subjectless clauses are essentially non-finite clauses having an infinitive or participle form of a verb.

He wanted [to change his name]. [infinitive]

She was [locking the door]. [participle]

His father got [charged with manslaughter]. [participle]

These bracketed portions all have a verb as its head. That is, they're all verb phrases, which still holds water even in recent linguistics and outside traditional grammar.

Now, what's the merit of reclassifying these verb phrases as non-finite clauses? To me, it merely seems to make the already confusing phrase-clause distinction even more confusing.'

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JK2
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  • I have asked this very question several times in comments and only gotten flippant, condescending answers. My concern is also whether this expansion of clause has any practical value in teaching or indeed anywhere. – KarlG Feb 27 '18 at 06:37
  • @KarlG Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. – JK2 Feb 27 '18 at 06:53
  • @Bread Whoever came up with "all that nonsense", though, I think it has a fairly broad support among modern linguists. So the reason for posting this question is not just to bash them but to give them the benefit of doubt and hopefully figure out why they did what they did. – JK2 Feb 27 '18 at 06:56
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    Wouldn’t this be a better fit for [linguistics.se]? The same considerations apply to many other languages, not just English, and I think you’d be more likely to get answers with a thorough theoretical base over there as well. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 27 '18 at 08:09
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Then, how can I move the question there? – JK2 Feb 27 '18 at 08:11
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    Just flag for moderator attention and ask them to migrate it. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 27 '18 at 08:12
  • I would like to know the answer, as the term non-finite clause is often branded by a number of users. Please do not migrate. – Mari-Lou A Feb 27 '18 at 08:42
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    I'll close-vote unless you remove the grouse 'Now, what's the merit of calling these verb phrases as non-finite clauses other than making the already confusing whole phrase-clause distinction even more confusing? ' // 'Now, what's the merit of reclassifying these verb phrases as non-finite clauses? To me, it merely seems to make the already confusing phrase-clause distinction even more confusing.' de-grouses and retains valid content. //// You've not mentioned verbless clauses. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 27 '18 at 10:28
  • @Mari-LouA I don't know what to do. One says to migrate and one says not to. You guys need to work it out. – JK2 Feb 27 '18 at 10:42
  • @EdwinAshworth An earlier comment particularly liked the "confusing" part. I'm not sure why an otherwise legitimate question should be close-voted by having what you think is a "grouse", when some other comment didn't seem to think it's a grouse at all. // I've not mentioned verless clauses, because I didn't want to make an already confusing topic more confusing. (no pun intended) – JK2 Feb 27 '18 at 10:46
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    I'm just saying I would like to know the answer to your Q and, for me, the question is on topic. You have to make that call, it's your question, not anyone else's. You know both sites well enough to make an informed decision. – Mari-Lou A Feb 27 '18 at 10:48
  • @Mari-LouA Got it. I'd raised a flag to move it to linguistics like a couple hours ago. But I've now retracted it. Thanks. – JK2 Feb 27 '18 at 10:57
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    ' ... what's the merit of calling these verb phrases as non-finite clauses other than making the already confusing whole phrase-clause distinction even more confusing?' is unwarranted sarcasm (or perhaps merely poor writing, I'll concede): how can 'making the already confusing whole phrase-clause distinction even more confusing' be included as a 'merit'? I've edited. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 27 '18 at 11:05
  • @EdwinAshworth I don't see any significant difference. But whatever suits you. – JK2 Feb 27 '18 at 11:13
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    Perhaps you'd explain to me how 'merits' can include 'making the already confusing whole phrase-clause distinction even more confusing' (+ implied others)? If you can, I'll humbly de-edit. Sadly 'But whatever suits you' seems dismissive and arrogant, in line with my first interpretation of ' ... what's the merit of calling these verb phrases as non-finite clauses other than making the already confusing whole phrase-clause distinction even more confusing?' – Edwin Ashworth Feb 27 '18 at 11:28
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    It's a pity that such a good and on-topic question should not have been phrased in a non-judgemental way. I look forward to hearing the arguments from for instance the CGEL camp on this. But there is still debate. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 27 '18 at 11:34
  • @EdwinAshworth You may be right about your understanding that 'making the already confusing whole phrase-clause distinction even more confusing' is not a merit per se. But I'd hoped to convey my frustration about linguists making things unnecessarily complicated and confusing, by treating 'confusing' as a virtue or even a merit among linguists. It seems, though, it might sound too convoluted to be an effective way of conveying that frustration of mine. So, I couldn't care less about the edit. Also, 'whatever suits you' didn't come across as I've intended. I meant literally that. – JK2 Feb 27 '18 at 11:57
  • If |She was [locking the door]. [participle]|, is a subject-less clause, then you have two clauses in that sentence? Is that right? I think that's nuts. How does that compare to: |She was locking the door while the car idled in the garage.|?? – Lambie Mar 16 '18 at 19:11
  • @Lambie What's so nuts about having two clauses in one sentence? – JK2 Mar 16 '18 at 20:14
  • @JK2 According to your analysis of the utterance, there are two clauses, but what of my add-on? That would then make it three according to what you say which is clearly an absurdity. I don't think there is a "subject-less clause"....and I am surprised no one has pointed that out.....what am I missing?? "She was locking the door" is a single sentence (utterance). My add-on makes it have two clauses. – Lambie Mar 17 '18 at 17:21
  • have you tried asking at https://conlang.stackexchange.com/? – JMP Mar 17 '18 at 21:46
  • A phrase by any other name would be more confusing. Which is why they use "clause". – Hot Licks Mar 17 '18 at 22:49
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    "She was locking the door" does not contain two clauses. – Lambie Mar 20 '18 at 16:07
  • @Lambie Your add-on? You mean 'while the car idled in the garage'? That's a prepositional phrase with a preposition 'while' having a clause as its complement. – JK2 Mar 21 '18 at 01:33
  • Unfortunately, it is isn't a prepositional phrase. *While is a conjunction joining the two clauses*. The is illustrated here: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/as-when-or-while (This is the same story in AmE). – Lambie Mar 21 '18 at 13:44
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    The key to unraveling this is the human nature to make implicit. First, do we call "verb phrases" clauses? "Lead on", "stir up", "find out", etc. are groups of words (phrases) that act as a verb—i.e. they are phrasal verbs. A clause is more than a phrasal verb: it must have a subject (which may be implicit) and a verb. I think "phrasal verb" is a more apt candidate for the name "verb phrase" than "clause" is. – niamulbengali Dec 22 '20 at 09:41

3 Answers3

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Well, this is a question about grammatical terminology, not about grammar, or English grammar, as I understand it. I've looked at a bit of the prior discussion here, comments and answers, but I'm not replying or referring to any of that here. I'm afraid I'm also not replying or referring to @JK2's concerns, either. This post is strictly intended as an answer to the title question, more or less as stated.

What is the merit of calling a verb phrase a clause?

But let's leave out the "merit" part; that's a preachy word in my English -- substitute "purpose", since this is something linguists do on purpose. And let's also not limit the answer just to verb phrases and clauses; if possible, a general principle -- or at least some well-plumbed rules of thumb -- would be welcome.

In the case of the verb phrase and the clause -- the presenting problem, as it were -- the question to ask, once you're able to identify verb phrases reliably (which takes some practice), is

  • What is a verb phrase, anyway?

There are a lot of things, and kinds of things, that are identifiable as verb phrases. A vast number of them. How do we learn to recognize them? Well, we tend to find them in clauses. Clauses are not really complete without a verb phrase, especially in English. In Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, Tom Robbins makes this point with the following statement:

  • This sentence no verb.

Probably the simplest and most useful description of a verb phrase is

  • A verb phrase is a clause that's missing its subject.

In other words, if you have a verb phrase, all you need to do is supply a subject, and you have a clause. And supplying a subject is never a problem -- we're good at that. That's why people continue to dangle participles and make dumb jokes -- they know their addressees will figure out what they want them to.

So here's the situation that puts a syntactician in. (One knows, of course, but doesn't particularly care, how The Oxford Dictionary defines phrase or clause; that's up to the syntactician to tell the dictionary, not the other way around.) The purpose of grammatical terminology is to make things easier to understand and remember. If verb phrases are associated with clauses, and one can always produce a clause with an appropriate subject for any verb phrase, why not say that verb phrases are just clauses with pieces missing? What would you do if you found a bird wing on the ground? You'd look around for the rest of the bird.

And so certain types of syntacticians (of which I am one) will tell you that every verb phrase in a sentence defines its own clause. Most of these clauses lose pieces because the pieces are predictable (by rule -- discovering these is what syntacticians do) and therefore recoverable (or else unimportant and therefore ignorable). This is basically what McCawley's grammar of English describes.

As it turns out, there are a lot of regularities. For instance, tensed English clauses have to have subject NPs present, to the point where dummy NP subjects like it and there are required, not optional, in many cases. On the other hand, untensed English clauses like infinitives, gerunds, and participles are frequently missing subjects and other chunks.

  • Bill wants [for Bill] to win = Bill wants to win.
  • Bill wants [for] Bill to win = Bill wants himself to win.
  • Bill wants (for) Mike to win = Bill wants Mike to win. (optional for)

These are handy and pop up all over the place; think about the purpose infinitive, the relative infinitive, and all the gerunds and participles people use for all kinds of purposes. They all represent longer clauses, and these clauses can be exhibited as needed. For a syntactician, that means an easy way to relate and categorize a lot of different syntactic phenomena, all under one rubric. That's irrestistible.

And that's the title McCawley chose for his grammar of English:

One could go on in this vein for quite a while, but I'll content myself with the observation that this is the same purpose, and the same kind of thinking, that allows clauses to function as noun phrases, and as adverbs, and as modifiers in a noun phrase. You use the tools to hand.

John Lawler
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  1. Grammar rules of some languages even traditionaly had to acknowledge one-terme clauses. For example Czech (and other Slavic) sentence "It is raining" contains only the verb, and supplying subject would look as strange as "Something is raining" in English. Oxford dictionary today should acknoledge other languuages have clauses, too.

  2. Linguistic research today studies the language as it is produced by people, not creating ideal language rules that nobody precisely follows. So anything people say, newspaper print needs to be classified. "Well!" is a perfect part of the language, as well any heading in newspaper or book. And I guess that they get classiffied as clauses (or sentences). "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go!" sounds to me as eleven clauses.

There is also preasure to have reasonable technical terminology when audio or text are collected in corpuses, and everything has to be segmented and classified. Postal address is a part of language, as well as "KarlG Feb 27 '18 at 6:37" from this page, or a chess game record. With a project of automatic translator in mind, or information retrieval engine, one should rather include everything.

  1. The linguists recognise about three levels of language, and when you go from the deep (near semantic) level to the surface level (what you say or write) there are several ways how a term may get lost (because known from the context, by analogy, because of language usage...). Any of them apply, generally, also to subject and preditate, and can make them disappear. However, there are some specific properties of English like that the subject is forced to appear on the surface level, and it is eventually "created" if it not at hand. ("It is five o'clock." "What is five o'clock?" "The time!" "So, why don't you say <The time is five o'clock>?".) This makes non-traditional clauses in English may-be infrequent but not impossible. So what is full subject-predicate on the deep level, may miss something on the surface level.

Sorry for my poor English, and my poor linguistics, but I hope my answer might help a bit. If you need better answer, maybe I convinced you to ask in the Linguistics department.

Decapitated Soul
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Indepe
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The merit behind this non-finite redefinition is to better acknowledge that verb usage can apply in those situations with context, and those without, of which both work by modern linguistics and must require an adjoining subject target to form a complete conclusion. Non-finite meaning without an end or conclusion, as without the adjoining subject target, there is none.

Scenarios:

  1. One which must contain a contextual definition of the subject target in a prior sentence or phrase. (participle, subject-less, adjoining phrase)
  2. One which must contain a contextual definition of the subject target in the current sentence or phrase. (participle, subject-less, compacted adjoining phrase)

Both of these scenarios are non-finite situations requiring additional phrases to offer a conclusion by the use of non-finite clauses.

Examples from yours meeting the subject-less clause rule of verb usage:

She was [locking the door]. [participle]

This fits into a subject-less clause adjacent to a contextual subject inquiry.

("What is [she] doing?") he asked. [contextual target] (inquiry)

("[Locking] the door.") [subject-less verb] (Subject-less clause)

It requires the first phrase prior to the non-finite subject-less verb usage to offer a conclusion.

His father got [charged] with manslaughter. [participle]

This fits into a non-committal subject-less clause adjacent to a contextual subject inquiry, with the addition of the ellipsis '...', implying non-committal or detached demeanor in the reply.

("What happened to [his father]?") [contextual target] (inquiry)

("...[charged] with manslaughter.") [subject-less verb] (non-committal reply)

It requires the first phrase prior to the non-finite subject-less verb usage to offer a conclusion, and provides emotional implications with the addition of the ellipsis.

So in other words, non-finite is describing the fact a subject-less clause must contain an adjoining phrase to become a finite body of words offering a conclusion. It is indeed difficult to comprehend as it deals with bodies of words, not entirely one sentence in many cases, and requires context.

Simply remembering "my non-finite verb-clause needs a finite conclusion to work" is a general mental rule that works.

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Robert Smith
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  • Sorry, but I don't know what the heck you're talking about. What do you even mean by 'conclusion' or 'end'? – JK2 Mar 19 '18 at 01:03